I have been in a number of bands over the years; previously it was mainly with dadaist performance and anarcho-punk groups.
Des Slow and The Stop Pills was first formed in the grey suburbs of South East London in the late 80s, we recorded a couple of demos before I moved away to Scotland. In the early 90s I moved to Kendal in Cumbria and pretty much stopped making music.
A few years ago I started to experiment with digital sound. My method of work tends to be both concept and process driven. My first album Elements was created by rendering html as sound and manipulating/editing it. More recently I have been collaborating with Still (another Cumbrian sonic artist), to produce a CD of material entitled De Stijl.
The tracks in 'Acces Aux Quais' use processed field recordings of trains as their only source material.
"To journey, that is, for a traveller to experience departure, transition and arrival, requires a mixing of themselves and others...Artefacts, moments in time, particular places, all these may aid or resist the ongoing creation of that journey and traveller. Each fluid mixing creates different and changing experiences: time, memory and place are never fixed.
...A journey is actively made through the traveller. It is made through the transformation of the traveller and their experience of the world; making the transition from departure to destination. ...A traveller is not just in motion, but always in transition."
Laura Watts 'An ethnographic guide to: making a train journey'. Published by the Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University, UK at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/wattslj/cemore.
I am currently working on ambient war soundscapes and a long-term project focused on political terrorism and cultural resistance from the late 1960s and beyond. I welcome any sonic contributions to either of these projects (and indeed any others that people feel inspired to collaborate on). I can be contacted through http://www.myspace.com/desslowandthestoppills